Hey, whaddya know? Something pony-related AND unrelated to the NATG. I guess the juggling of multiple projects actually works!

Here’s a supplementary image for the fanfic “Ponyville 911”, a story with enough quasi-nuclear explosions, foul-mouth equines, and enthusiastic judicial take-downs to appease any action-film aficionado. MisterMoniker, the author, approached me early on in the summer and asked whether I’d be willing to create a replacement for the pencil sketch that served as his cover. While I’m not proud of the time it took to get the picture done, I’m not complaining about the results, and I’m thankful for the patience MisterMoniker demonstrated over the past two to three months.

As you can see, the image itself has a straightforward composition, piggybacking on Hollywood’s tendency to advertise using dramatic amounts of smoke and flames; I knew from the start that I’d also need colored film grain, motion blur, and lens flare. The final product therefore attempts to straddle the line between satire and homage, a la “Hot Fuzz”. Most of my time and energy was spent designing the story’s main characters, Officers Cherry ‘n Berries and Dodge Charger, and I’m sorry to say that a lot of my hard work didn’t make it into the final product. On the plus side, my experiments with layered clouds and explosions appears to have been successful, so you’ll probably see more of those in the future.

For those interested, I’ve once again uploaded a sequence of the picture at various stages of development in my Scraps folder. Stuff like that has always helped me fine-tune my technique, so hopefully it helps someone else out, too. I’ll also upload my notes for Dodge and Cherry’s designs in the same folder, in case that tickles the fancy of all you OC designers.

“My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic” © Lauren Faust and Hasbro

All rights to their respective owners, too.

Read MisterMoniker’s “Ponyville 911” here! [link]